Maffei rejoins Expedia’s board

Greg Maffei — who spent five months as president of Oracle Corp. before leaving to join Liberty Media Corp. — has joined the board of Bellevue-based Expedia, according to this filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He replaces Robert Bennett. As an Expedia shareholder, Liberty Media is entitled to two of the online travel company’s board seats.

The board appointment is a homecoming for Maffei, the former chief financial officer at Microsoft who served on Expedia’s board between 1999 and 2003.

UPDATE: A reader just reminded me that Maffei also sits on the board of Zillow.com — the Seattle online real estate startup founded by former Expedia executives Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink. That’s an interesting tidbit because BusinessWeek chronicled the bad blood between Expedia Chairman Barry Diller and the Zillow team in this story from August. (Zillow.com also is a potential competitor of RealEstate.com — one of the many Internet companies in Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp.).

I am not sure what this means — if anything at all. But it certainly puts Maffei — whose “marching orders” were laid out in this BusinessWeek story — in an interesting position.

Maffei rejoins Expedia’s board

Greg Maffei — who spent five months as president of Oracle Corp. before leaving to join Liberty Media Corp. — has joined the board of Bellevue-based Expedia, according to this filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He replaces Robert Bennett. As an Expedia shareholder, Liberty Media is entitled to two of the online travel company’s board seats.

The board appointment is a homecoming for Maffei, the former chief financial officer at Microsoft who served on Expedia’s board between 1999 and 2003.

UPDATE: A reader just reminded me that Maffei also sits on the board of Zillow.com — the Seattle online real estate startup founded by former Expedia executives Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink. That’s an interesting tidbit because BusinessWeek chronicled the bad blood between Expedia Chairman Barry Diller and the Zillow team in this story from August. (Zillow.com also is a potential competitor of RealEstate.com — one of the many Internet companies in Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp.).

I am not sure what this means — if anything at all. But it certainly puts Maffei — whose “marching orders” were laid out in this BusinessWeek story — in an interesting position.